Having detailed the circumstances connected with the edition of Milton, we return to the regular correspondence.
TO JOSEPH HILL, ESQ.[739]
Weston, Dec. 10, 1793.
You mentioned, my dear friend, in your last letter, an unfavourable sprain that you had received, which you apprehended might be very inconvenient to you for some time to come; and having learned also from Lady Hesketh the same unwelcome intelligence, in terms still more alarming than those in which you related the accident yourself, I cannot but be anxious, as well as my cousin, to know the present state of it; and shall truly rejoice to hear that it is in a state of recovery. Give us a line of information on this subject, as soon as you can conveniently, and you will much oblige us.
I write by morning candle-light; my literary business obliging me to be an early riser. Homer demands me: finished, indeed, but the alterations not transcribed: a work to which I am now hastening as fast as possible. The transcript ended, which is likely to amount to a good sizeable volume, I must write a new preface: and then farewell to Homer for ever! And if the remainder of my days be a little gilded with the profits of this long and laborious work, I shall not regret the time that I have bestowed on it.
I remain, my dear friend,
Affectionately yours,
W. C.
Can you give us any news of Lord Howe's Armada; concerning which we may inquire, as our forefathers did of the Spanish,—"an in cœlum sublata sit, an in Tartarum depressa?"[740]
The reader may now be anxious to learn some particulars of the projected poem, which has been repeatedly mentioned under the title of The Four Ages; a poem to which the mind of Cowper looked eagerly forward, as to a new and highly promising field for his excursive fancy. The idea had been suggested to him in the year 1791, by his clerical neighbour, Mr. Buchanan, of Ravenstone, a small sequestered village within the distance of an easy walk from Weston. This gentleman, who had occasionally enjoyed the gratification of visiting Cowper, suggested to him, with a becoming diffidence, the project of a new poem on the four distinct periods of life—infancy, youth, manhood, and old age. He imparted his ideas to the poet by a letter, in which he observed, with equal modesty and truth, that Cowper was particularly qualified to relish, and to do justice to the subject; a subject which he supposed not hitherto treated expressly, as its importance deserved, by any poet ancient or modern.